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Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

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Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#41

Post by doorhammer »

LukasMathis wrote: post #38
doorhammer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The digital pen part is the one that keeps tempting me to check out the surface pro 2. I'm no artist, but having a digital notebook would be really nice. I want something that really comes close to the fidelity and feel of a notebook and a pen. For instance, when I'm sketching out a design or an idea, I like to jot down the ideas, connections, etc, and move them around. I like doodling random notes during meetings, a…

Not as good as pen on paper, but the closest I've ever seen. You should probably go to a store and play with one to see if it suits you. I bought my Surface after I did that.

Awesome. Yeah, I think I'm going to do just that today.

I've got an ipad, which I love for a lot of things, but even with the various pens/stylii, the writing experience is pretty bad, for me.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#42

Post by bad_user »

On using multiple apps for the same task, the author is completely right. However, it's also the reason for why I don't like Metro on the desktop, as I often need to look at more than 2 windows at the same time. For desktops, the split-screen concept in Metro is a huge step backwards, whereas for tablets it's a step forward.

But here's why I hate the iPad and hope Windows RT never wins in the marketplace, as it shares the same problem with iOS - it's defective by design. Personally I can't use or recommend to other people platforms on top of which Firefox or other alternative browsers cannot run.

And btw, both Surface and Surface 2 are Windows RT devices. Only Surface Pro isn't. And the reason for why Windows 8 for x86 was spared for the moment is because it replaces Windows 7, so because of market forces, but I hate the direction in which Microsoft is moving.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57432435-92/why-mozilla-bel...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57431475-92/google-agrees-w...

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#43

Post by scholia »

AndrewGaspar wrote: post #35

"The way I want handwriting recognition to work is to take notes by jotting them down inside an app like OneNote, and have Windows recognize that automatically, behind the scenes, optionally without replacing my handwritten notes with printed text. Then, I want to be able to search my handwritten notes using full-text search." OneNote actually already does this! Try searching in OneNote for things you've written in p…

ISTR that OneNote already did that a decade ago in Windows XP Tablet Edition ;-)

Syncs with an audio recording as well....

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#44

Post by LukasMathis »

winfred wrote: post #30

Typing this from my T100, That incidentally quite meets my needs for around 1/4th of the cost of a Surface Pro 2. Some of the criticism is just plain wrong, like the "install software for USB booting install media." Yeah, I can write quite a bit too, about how hard it is to use the operating system, when I'm the one who randomly downloads crapware and tries to install it, instead of just doing a search and using the…

I think it's fair to note that you might not be completely representative of the average Windows user. Glad to hear that you're happy with how the disk manager looks, though :-)

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#47

Post by LukasMathis »

doorhammer wrote: post #41
LukasMathis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as good as pen on paper, but the closest I've ever seen. You should probably go to a store and play with one to see if it suits you. I bought my Surface after I did that.

Awesome. Yeah, I think I'm going to do just that today. I've got an ipad, which I love for a lot of things, but even with the various pens/stylii, the writing experience is pretty bad, for me.

Same here. Even just the faster processor, and the responsiveness while drawing that comes with that, makes a big difference.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#48

Post by LukasMathis »

bad_user wrote: post #42

On using multiple apps for the same task, the author is completely right. However, it's also the reason for why I don't like Metro on the desktop, as I often need to look at more than 2 windows at the same time. For desktops, the split-screen concept in Metro is a huge step backwards, whereas for tablets it's a step forward. But here's why I hate the iPad and hope Windows RT never wins in the marketplace, as it share…

I'm thinking the natural progression of the split-screen mode would be a system-level tiling window manager. An advanced, easy-to-use version of what most IDEs implement to show their various panes.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#49

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

bad_user wrote: post #42

On using multiple apps for the same task, the author is completely right. However, it's also the reason for why I don't like Metro on the desktop, as I often need to look at more than 2 windows at the same time. For desktops, the split-screen concept in Metro is a huge step backwards, whereas for tablets it's a step forward. But here's why I hate the iPad and hope Windows RT never wins in the marketplace, as it share…

>And the reason for why Windows 8 for x86 was spared for the moment is because it replaces Windows 7, so because of market forces, but I hate the direction in which Microsoft is moving.

I doubt that. I think Windows on ARM was a backup plan because x86 processors weren't good enough. To reduce the amount of things needed to be ported and to reduce confusion (x86 apps not running on ARM), they limited WoA to WinRT.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#50

Post by pinaceae »

fumar wrote: post #15
nextstep wrote: post #4

"There are artists who draw on iPads, and musicians who make music on iPads, and writers who write novels on iPads, and movie makers who cut their movies on iPads. But the fact that you have to point to these people, the fact that there are articles about these people, shows that they’re unusual." Unusual in a relative sense, the same way artists and musicians and movie makers are unusual in any segment of society. T…

Last summer I participated in a startup accelerator in Chicago. My Macbook died in the first week! At the time, I didn't have the funds to purchase another Apple machine. Luckily, my girlfriend had recently purchased a Surface RT with the keyboard cover. I did not think that the tablet would be able to replace a laptop for "serious" work, but it did. There are a couple of things that allowed me to do this. First, a U…

you did all of that on a Surface RT? Impressive, because Excel and Powerpoint are unusably slow on RT.

Source: We've developed a business app for Win 8, development was co-sponsered by MS and Intel. We have a very succesful iPad app in our vertical, it allowed large swaths of our customer base to switch to iPads for their fieldforce.

MS themselves acknowledged that if you want to handle "large Excel" files, the RT is the wrong device.

The Surface Pro 2 finally has the performance.

I understand your enthusiasm, switching from a 2005 MB Pro to any device in 2013 is mindblowing. Just hold back with a little bit too much hyperbole, the RT was an underspecced consumer device, Office support on it was an afterthought and a paniced scramble for the dev team (as documented here on HN a while ago).

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